André Brie, 16 September, contribution to “Sächsische Zeitung“


The East Germany of the CDU. Three questions


The federal executive of the CDU, on 15 September, approved a paper on the history and perspective of East Germany that was already hotly debated in advance. It won't come any better. The demand by the CDU to defend liberty and democracy without any compromise must be consensus. That is also the most important consequence from the history and reality of the GDR. No pretended or real idealistic purpose can justify lack of freedom, anti-democratism, disrespect of human rights and dictatorship. That above all caused the GDR to fail. That in the last instance destroyed its legitimacy. If socialism, following Marx, is supposed to mean a civilisationally and economically superior society, where the free development of the individuals is the condition for the free development of all, then the Left must, also for these additional reasons, on the one hand be a sharp critic of dictatorial socialism, on the other hand, learn the lesson to the end that fredom and democracy must be valid without restrictions for left and radically renewed socialist politics. That by far is not a concluded process, but a lasting task for the socialist left. It would be dangerous, and by the way would also destroy the future power of the Left, if in the light of its new acceptance among millions of people, it played down the responsibility for crimes, dictatorship and economic failure that many members have, who like me, come from the SED. To what extent, however, the CDU leadership in its paper ignores the depth, the seriousness and the intensity of changes in the former PDS and in today's party The Left, yes, even alleges that it is committed to the “overthrow of our free democratic order and the social market economy“, is boring, not serious and must be seen in the context of the intended reedition of a red sox campaign in 2009. Many of its local representatives and other deputies that have democratic, reliable partners in the Left, know better than that.


However, there are three decisive questions for me that I want to ask the CDU, where I don't understand the CDU leadership.


First of all, it seems to me a problem of the highest degree that the left demand for a “system change“ per se is defamed as an attack precisely against the free and democratic order of the Federal Republic. That the Left wants a system change, as the CDU notes, I cannot and do not want to deny. Yet, that refers to the overcoming of the ruling market radicalism (neoliberalism) that we left people ourselves consider as a system change as compared to the social state principle of the Basic Law. The journalist Arno Luik, in the magazine “Stern“, even described the politics of the Agenda 2010 planned by the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and FDP as a coup and as a “qualitative leap into another social system“. About that, I think, the Left really needs to talk and be able to commit to a retraction of the system change accomplished by the other parties by the re-gaining and the future-oriented renewal of the social state.


Freedom and democracy are, this really needs to be understood and practiced without reservation after Communist Party and GDR history, the uncrossable frontiers of party differences. Otherwise, parties are of course partisan. And that is good. We individuals as well have different convictions and come to different conclusions. The parties distinguish themselves by their value orientations, world views and policy measures. That is how society and democracy need them. Yet, maybe one ought to write in the meantime: they used to distinguish themselves. At least in Germany, they have become more and more similar over the past two decades. That has become a very serious problem for politics and in particular for democracy, public confrontation and the participation of citizens in the fundamental affairs of their community. “The end of history“, that's how this phenomenon has been called. In the meantime, it is obvious, however, that also after the collapse of East European state socialism, not only one or the other aspect of the political road needs to be renegotiated, but that in the light of continued and new radical economic, social, cultural and global changes, there also must be question of fundamentally different political setting of the points. Ralf Dahrendorf, a great liberal, even said in 1994 already: “There are times, where social conflicts and their scientific discussion assume a fundamental or constitutional character... That was the case in the 18th century; it is again the case at the end of the 20th century. At such moments, the rules of the game of power and society themselves are under discussion.“ I think he is right. We shouldn't be afraid of such confrontation. It is a democratic chance. To push aside the great diversity of possible answers, on the other hand, is dangerous. Many people no longer notice the party differences. Two-thirds of the population at the end of 2006 thought, according to the ARD Germany TREND, that conditions were unjust in the Federal Republic, a third saw itself at the loser's end. For the first time, more women and men citizens were dissatisfied rather than satisfied with the functioning of democracy in Germany. This Germany-wide number with the best will in the world can no longer be categorised under consequences of the GDR, but needs to be understood as an urgent signal of danger by all the parties. A democratic party like the CDU in my opinion should recognise the value and the necessity also of parties which distinguish themselves from it more than a twin and want a democratic, but certainly socio-political competition with it.


Secondly: why does the CDU in its declaration ignore so much the threatening extent of social crisis? In East Germany, that is an especially threatening problem, but for a long time, it has been present federation-wide. In a few East German regions, parts of the Lausitz, the Uckermark and Western Pomerania, despite large infrastructural investments, there have been threatening for a long time already hardly reversible social, cultural and demographic destructions. No, I do not plead for manicheaism, only for realising problems, and for considering very different evaluations and political conclusions as being legitimate and necessary and for fending for them in the democratic competition. After all, cannot and shouldn't we, in the light of millions of people in the low-wage sector, in precarious work relationships, subsisting on Hartz IV, also ask for fundamental alternatives? Is it not a fact that very many people in Germany are socially excluded? That this exclusion is often “let in inheritance“ to the children by way of social resignation and isolation or bad educational chances? And do you have to be left to reconcile yourself with that? Social splits of this extent are terrible not only for the concerned, but dangerous, and in the long term expensive for the whole society. There are undoubtedly a lot of positive things, and ever since 1990, precisely in East Germany, decisive things have been done for the people: rights of freedom, infrastructure, rescue of old city centres, overcoming of irresponsible environmental destructions, new, highly modern industries, ten-thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises. It belongs to the most important points of the paper that it highlights the achievements of the East German women and men citizens for peaceful revolution and this change, that it does not forget the real solidarity of the whole society, even if at the same time, the impression is produced as if the CDU was the sole engine or driver of this story. (Yet, this I book with great understanding under Chamberlain's generally valid insight: “The principle of historical instruction still today with us everywhere in Europe is systematic distortion. By constantly highlighting one's own achievements, keeping silent those of the others...“ etc.)


Yet, why does the CDU leadership does not at all address these social crises and their dramatic consequences and dangers. Are they acceptable then to conservative and liberals? They certainly cannot be for society as a whole. Following DGB data, 41.1% of wage earners (women and men) in East Germany are under the low-wage threshold, not to speak of unemployed and social aid recipients. The CDU-governed countries Thuringia and Saxony are pioneers of that tendency. Cannot you stress the positive, while at the same time raising such serious questions as well? Do you still seriously think that these problems can be solved with modern streets and other infrastructure investment or a combined salary?


Thirdly: Now I still want to return one more time to historical aspects, to a topic that has electrified me for a long time. If the CDU government promises “consequent and decisive resistance“ against playing down political oppression in the GDR, I say: correct. And you certainly won't be alone. But again: Why should this only be possible by permanently equating “right-wing and left-wing radical parties“, national socialism, Holocaust (!) and SED dictatorship? It goes into detail: “The GDR... was a consequence of the Soviet victory in the Second World War.“ I long back to Richard von Weizsäcker and his speech on 8 May 1984, even to Helmut Kohl, who in the newspaper “Die Welt“ on 11 January 1989 struck a completely different note: “... the division of Germany is after all a result of the Second World War that Adolf Hitler unleashed.“ The equation of GDR and German National Socialism after all does not mean a particularly sharp confrontation with crimes in the GDR, but only a particularly fuzzy, blurred and wrong one. Especially, however, it plays down precisely the Holocaust and the whole unique extent of national socialist and racist genocide and war. Why can't German conservatives, - but we also see this problem in the unspeakable Hitler-Lafontaine comparison by Helmut Schmidt, and German Left people are also not free of that - , why can't we lead sharp and consequent confrontations with the political opponent and the GDR without such dangerous and stupid equivalences? In the final analysis, only the new Nazis and racists will profit from such equations. And I won't let anyone persuade me that the CDU can have any interest in that, it has none.